


Situations, Hostage and Otherwise

by tenlittlebullets



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Foe Yay, Noodle Incidents, UNIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenlittlebullets/pseuds/tenlittlebullets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>UNIT is being harassed by their resident doctor's rogue-Time-Lord archnemesis. Must be a day ending in Y.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Situations, Hostage and Otherwise

Some people just sow chaos wherever they go, and when that place happens to be Earth, UNIT is inevitably called in to get things under control. It’s reached the point where every time River Song’s face comes up on the RED ALERT screen, Martha Jones isn’t sure whether to scream with frustration or dance a secret jig because now her day is guaranteed to be interesting.

The first time, River wrote her off as another UNIT grunt and barely looked twice at her, just apologized for tying her up and got back to hotwiring the crashed validium freighter. Which was convenient, because she never even saw her captive jimmying the handcuffs until Martha had already tripped the self-destruct circuit and started running like hell. Ever since, River has taken an... interest... in her. Martha isn’t sure whether this is better or worse than being written off. She does seem to spend a lot of time in handcuffs, on the receiving end of River’s saucy winks. But the respect is nice. After a while, she even starts getting the strangest impression that River’s high-octane shenanigans are crafted specifically to give Martha Jones a challenge, which would be utterly mad except that River has an uncanny knack for showing up when Martha is bored.

Her superiors start to take note of it, too. Especially when River rings up UNIT headquarters, cool as you please, on a top-secret line whose only other connection is a phone in 10 Downing Street, and says, “Hello, darlings, just thought you’d like to know there’s a very confused hoplite phalanx opening trans-dimensional portals all over St James’s Park. _Don’t_ send the regular boys to deal with it, it would be a shame if any of them got hurt. All I need is Martha Jones.” It’s not entirely clear whether this is a request for backup or a veiled threat of a hostage situation. When Martha staggers back to headquarters hours later, having just been proclaimed champion by a mad soothsayer and talked into duelling River with what appeared to be actual lightsabers, it’s _still_ not clear; what is clear, at least to the UNIT old-timers, is that Martha’s relationship with River now constitutes a Situation, whether hostage or otherwise. Her Escapology instructor teams up with the Brigadier to stage an intervention, and both of them lecture her solemnly on the dangers of becoming too cozy with one’s mad loose-cannon intergalactic archnemesis.

The lecture almost sticks. Almost. Martha, remembering the year that never was, is starting to feel really, properly, gut-twistingly chagrined. And then Brigadier McShane spoils the effect entirely by adding, “Were you serious, Jones? Real lightsabers? And there were those plasma rockets last time... Sergeant, ring 10 Downing and see if this Professor Song is still where Jones left her. I think I need to buy her a drink.”


End file.
